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Kim Taeyoon received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Film, Video, New Media. His first solo show opened at One and J. Gallery on October 17, 2014. He has been included in group shows at One And J. Gallery, Seoul (2014 and 2013), Salon de H, Seoul (2014), Space 15th, Seoul (2011) Seoul Art Cinema, Space Cell (2006), Gallery Busker, Chicago (2006), Rodan, Chicago (2006) and Enemy Gallery, Chicago (2006).

I first met Kim Taeyoon in 2007 when he was at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the following years his work was focused on commercial projects and innovative and new uses of video and media technology. We became reacquainted in 2009 through mutual friends and have since become good friends. Following his development as a media artist I realized that Kim is doing something beyond just making videos, that his work taps into the dominance of media and it’s role in our lives by transforming it into representations that show the ebb and flow of data used and forgotten. On the surface this density of information and data, however obscured, are playful, and engaging, even hypnotic images. Like our experience as users of the Internet and media Kim’s works draw upon what is not visible. They act as commentary on the disconnection between information programming and user experience, and the indirection of contemporary communication and information. Although digital there is a sense of analog urge for connection within his works especially ones like Chit Chat (2012 and 2013) where the work is based on social media.

The following interview questions, which where answered via email, are based on a conversation Kim Taeyoon and I had in June 2014.

Julia Marsh: As a student I understand you started working in narrative film and video. Your work now is almost entirely non-linear constructions in digital media. Can you describe the process or intentions by which you made this shift?

Kim Taeyoon: I wanted to simplify my working process. Rather than piling up my thoughts and present them altogether, I wanted to work spontaneously as they came. For me, (narrative) films were too complex in the process, at that time. But the influence of time is deeply rooted in me and I intend to use it in my work.

JM: You use fairly complicated algorithms that result in relatively simple shapes and hypnotic patterning. I see a relationship between the labor used, and trance music culture. Is there some spiritual connections between the work and the results? Or is it in the work alone?

KTY: I wanted show movement, in which the boundary of the start and the end are soft, as something constantly goes round and round. I have been looking for something like a movement, which we can just see purely without the expectation on the ending with the estimation of what will show up next, so that this led me to use algorithm. As well as I began wanting to simplify the shape/figure to emphasize the movement. Actually, the algorithm is not that complicated. Many parts of my work are influenced by the electronic music and sampling culture. Music culture takes a big part of me.

JM: Each of the pieces from 2013 seems to employ color and pattern akin to Minimalism or Color Field Painting. Would it be accurate to say that despite your practice being digitally generated that you think like a painter?

KTY: For some of my works, I plan a sort of system, in which the software actually draws the picture. Most of them have a structure that randomly generates a simple movement. I wanted to show elements like a certain motion, rhythm, and cut and dissolve in film, as a temporal image without narrative. I do not think myself as a painter, but I am under the influence, hugely, by painters.

JM: Your work Chit Chat (2012/2013) taps into social media and our usage of the same, while other works tap into the patterns of data produced on the Internet. What was the inspiration for Chit Chat and do you think that since making that piece social media has changed?

KTY: The reason I chose to use social media in my work is not to present the recorded objects, but to show the things that are presently captured, the data, which is generated in real time. The data can be many repetitive movements with the blurred edge of beginning and ending, as well as temporal images. The two words that are used in Chit Chat, in 2012, love and hate, were used so frequently in 2014 that the computer could not display the effect, on screen, in real time. The users and traffic increased that much. I am also now accessing more often, than at that time.

JM: One aspect of your work is that you interface with what is going on around you very easily; making use of the Internet and sources like Twitter for generating your images. What are you responding to in your environment?

KTY: I spend a major amount of time each day looking at the laptop screen. I do my work with the computer, receive information through the Internet and communicate with people through social media. And then a day just passes by. Naturally, the line between reality and virtual reality is ambiguous. I feel virtual reality has become tangible now, and the reality is becoming more and more something elusive. I am thinking about the meaning of relative time, which is under the influence of the environment like this. I wonder about those effects, which are created by fast Internet speeds and the information that is always accessible, the illusions that show on the electronic signboards on the street, the rhythm of the neon light and the faster transportation. I contemplate on how we can adapt ourselves to the real space that is increasingly narrowed, and the territory of virtual reality that is more and more growing.

JM: You described your work as being the wrinkle, or fold in the surface of digital media, as something that disrupt the surface. Can you elaborate on this?

KTY: The texture of the screen is slick. In the present day, where the technology is more developed, the pixels in the screen are denser and the image becomes smoother. It may seem that the speed of technological progress is faster and everything becomes dense, but like most of the computers have some bugs and report errors, there are creases hiding in the microscopic level of the external slickness. Digital media has an exceeding advantage on finding and showing those things.

Jang Min Seung earned his BFA and MFA from Chung-ang University, in Seoul, South Korea. He has had solo exhibitions at Space Willing and Dealing, Seoul (2014), One and J. Gallery, Seoul (2012 and (2010), Art+Lounge Dibang, Seoul (2010), and Seomi & Tuus, Seoul(2008 and 2006). He has been included in group exhibitions at Seoul Museum of History, (2014), Kumho Museum, Seoul (2013), Gillman Barracks, Singapore, (2012), Culture Station 284 Seoul, (2012), Salon de H, Seoul, (2011), KIMUSA, Seoul (2009), Seoul Design Week, Fuorisalone, Milano, Italy (2007), Cais Gallery, Seoul (2006). In 2010 Jang was awarded a grant for Visual Arts by the Seoul Art and Culture Foundation, the SeMA Young Artist support program by the Seoul Museum of Art and a grant for Mullae Arts Plus by the Seoul Art and Culture Foundation. He was named the 2006 Korea Design Award: Young Product Designer of the Year.

Jang’s work is sometimes collaborative and other times not, however his work is generally sensitive and carefully constructed from observation of his subjects. Jang is one of a younger generation of artists that has experience that cuts across disciplines and does not adhere to the gallery as a main form of exhibition. I first became acquainted with Jang’s work when he showed large-scale photographs of windows in abandoned apartments titled In Between Times. These photographs of windows looking out onto nature are much like paintings of nature from an earlier age. Initially installed in an abandoned house, the buildings structure underscored the in between quality of their context. Jang’s background in design and music inform his work in photography, sculpture, and sound. His is a hybrid, one that developed as a natural outcropping of his interests. Jang is nothing if not thorough in his approach and attitude towards making. It is this drive that makes his works definitive.

The following interview questions, which where answered via email, are based on a conversation Jang Min Seung and I had in June 2014.

Julia Marsh: I understand you did not start out as an artist. How or why did you make this transition?

Jang Min Seung: Since I was a teenager, I was deeply into rock music, and I when I formed my first rock band, I met my collaborator, Jung Jae Il, who was the band’s guitarist. Our music back then was just copying Western heavy metal and rock numbers. Sometime after, Jung was noticed for his brilliant music and quit school to take the path of a professional musician, while I became an art student at a university. But after I got in, the school did not feel particularly fresh or new to me. It was 1997, and Hongdae was, more than today, filled with musicians and artists of various fields, as well as their exchanges. At that time, I was a bassist in an independent rock band and played for many festivals and events over the whole country, and time to time, participated on some soundtracks with Jung. Also after my first trip to London in 1998, I became obsessed with electronic music, and because of this, I even ran a club for a short time. With these experiences, I passed my 20s embodying the subcultures of the time. I started my military service in 1999, and after I was discharged, when I was 23, I founded a soundtrack production company with my friends, who are great musicians. The Korean film scene was in its golden era at that time, so that I could participate in the field as a producer and coordinator for about 20commercial films, in a short period of time. In response to the fatigue that came from listening to music as a job and commercial activities, I started to make furniture as a hobby, which was similar to my major. When I was in the college, I was into minimalism and so when I formally launched the furniture line I do so in this style. Looking back, there were almost no competitors, who were both making and designing furniture, so it was a very smooth debut for me as a designer. At that time, I thought I was meant to be a furniture maker. Naturally, I stopped working on the music related jobs. My tables were very popular so that I could freely observe my clients’ living spaces, so when I was about 30 I began to compare the different contexts of the things in spaces and the cultural taste of the owners. Sometimes I had severe prejudice on these things, which made me feel disgusted by my self. So I began wondering, if someone who doesn’t have a career background like mine, could they look at things without comparison or prejudice? So I stopped making furniture and started to take photographs ofthe offices of different embassies in Korea, and taking large scale pictures of various spaces for three years, which resulted in A Multi-Culture (2010) at One and J. Gallery, and In between Times (2010) at Art+Lounge Dibang. Based on the various cultural experiences in my 20s, this was the turning point at which I presented my formative language.

JM: Your work tends to have very concrete parameters with the exception of Willing + Dealing? Why is that?

JMS: I think your point is very accurate. I tend to consider formal beauty andits pleasure as very important, sometimes too much. Although the narrative is important, I believethat the message of one image, musical piece, or their formal beauty and texture (or finish for design) sometimes exceeds the narrative. Maybe this thought came from my direct experiences in the different focuses of my youth and the techniques and collaborative styles that I acquired from these interactions. (Later I had thought that Sanglim would never be possible without these experiences.) Critics say of my works, that they find a common formal beauty whether the work is a piece of furniture, a photograph, or in a new media form. My working process often starts with excessiveness and goes through steps that leave the minimum, and I hope the audience can find more stories because of this process. In Japanese literature, there is the poetic genre Haiku, which is a very simple verse with a fixed form, and because of its brevity and implication, the readers can have different personal interpretations. So every time I released my work, I intended to have an opinion, but not to state it. Sometimes this feels like dogma, which use to I lock myself in my own formal structure. But in the case of the exhibition in Space Willing + Dealing, I intended to be different from my earlier work and be very flexible, which was to not make any additional works for the exhibition and just comfortably lay out and mix the leftover pieces that were not released, (including photographs, furniture, and sculptures), and roughly show my hybrid identity, or rather my work. To realize this, I chose a coarse and vertically and horizontally distorted space for the exhibition. Especially, the for exhibitionHidden Track, I released my work TABLE 2, which I’ made for 10 years, and also exhibited research materials, like A Multi-Culture and B-cuts from In between Times. I could feel that the way I look at things had widely changed from before. A big awakening about my series of works came to me through this exhibition, so that I felt it was a kind of retrospective of mypast 10 years.

JM: Besides your photographic works, with your collaborator Jang Jae Il, you have done many sound works. This type of media work is increasingly finding its support and a place in exhibition. What are some of the challenges you have faced in realizing a project like Sanglim?

JMS: The biggest and the toughest problem that I confronted, while I was processing Sanglim, was the perception of how to look at the form of this work. Sanglim was a pilot project with the cooperation of central and regional organization and professionals to overcome both the standard form of public art and the practices that solidify the form. And the objective space, Sanglim Park in Hamyang, Kyungsangnam-do, is a park and also a forest, which its name implies, and at the same time, it is a natural monument and a neighborhood park. The scenery was already cluttered with many objects, so we suggested not placing anything, and instead make an invisible work, and one without the most important attribute for proposing public art: durability (or permanency), so that it will perish as the time passes. At the beginning, the process of convincing for this was the most difficult thing.

JM: The three sound pieces that you worked on Sanglim, Mullae and at Jeju Island, could also be called site-specific. Do you think there is a need to distinguished between genres or is it all the same?

JMS: From time to time, I have been asked to summarize the work of Jang Min Seung + Jung Jae Il. In fact, it is hard for us to explain our works and we do not explain it as a certain thing or a genre, but we do think that we have been showing results that no one else ever did. The works in Sanglim, Munlae-dong, and Jeju are different in their site-specificity and background, so that the experiencing audiences are also different; in turn I recently felt there is a disparity between works that are freely made and those that are commissioned for certain purposes. This question is suggestive of the change in our future works, which will be different from previous works. So I would rather not classify the works of Jang Min Seung + Jung Jae Il, and just anticipate our works. In the distant future, I hope our work becomes a genre, not a style. I even wish it will not be recognized as art.

JM: Your works each have an underlying social concern, like housing or construction. Would you say this is true for your latest work Willing + Dealing?

JMS:I think the answer will overlap a lot with my previous answers. All individuals, including artists, are making connections to the environment (city, society) they are living, but different from the others. I think artists actively find it and make a statement about it. I was once confused with my very Westernized design language, which I found in my 20s as a designer. To resolve this, I took many pictures of new town areas and other scenes, like an anthropologist does fieldwork. These were not for public eyes at the beginning, yet some of them became projects, while others did not. Maybethe reason why the images I showed at Space Willing + Dealing could be seen that way, is that they were less refined than the other works that has become projects and exhibited. Correspondingly, Hidden Track was an improvisatory mixture of leftover wooden scraps from making commercial furniture, while B-cuts were photographs and sculptures, and the furniture fragments and images that I took near the exhibition site.Each installation I put there was one element, and I hoped the exhibition site to become one big work.

JM: You seem to move between commercial work and art making with relative ease. What do you think is the relationship between art and commerce in Korea?

JMS:Because I don’t have much experience making money as an artist, I cannot really speak about the relation between art and commerce in Korea. But what I feel is that the size of the art market in Korea is too small. This is not just about the size of the artwork deals, but the price for the artist is also too small, no matter in the art field or commercial field. This is why artists naturally tend to have another job. Simply, it is hard to make a living from making art. When I see the many musicians around me, they commonly do different activities, like sessions for popular music, and their own music. Through this, I see they keep their work habits and persist in their creative works, yet I saw many artists who think this is shameful, and that they are tainted by such work.

For my case, it may look easy to come and go, but actually it is a very difficult matter. There was a time that the music, which I was interested in, became my means of living, and after that my interest moved to design. And then design became the means of living, then I had my late start on art based on the view I learned from design. Now being an artist became my job and I spend most of my time doing it more than before, but the good thing is that this work cannot be my means of living at all. (Especially because I am more and more attracted to ephemeral works, which is non-materialistic and communicating through some particular experiences.) So I think this is the work, which I can keep doing. If this becomes a major moneymaker, I will definitely feel bored. Commercial films, popular music, and the design field, which are in a love-hate relationship with me, have bigger capital, newer technology and more trained and reasonable people than in the art field. I am not just making money from them, but also discovering the materials and learning many things that nobody can teach me.

Chung So Young’s work can be best described as non-figurative sculpture. But in fact her work has a tendency towards site-specificity. Her concern with the presence space and the absence of form is clearly a question of site. Where does the work begin and end. So here site is not place, but space. As well, Chung’s earlier work references geology and sedimentation. Using the city of Seoul as a source of information and inspiration Chung’s work shows the life of the city as on in which change is unending. When we talked I was struck by how philosophical Chung was about her ever so material work.

The following interview questions, which where answered via email, are based on a conversation Chung So Young and I had in May 2014.

Julia Marsh: Your work possesses qualities and principles found in Formalist and Minimalist sculpture, while also being situated as site-specific. What are the particular concepts related to space that you draw upon as you plan your works? And conversely, how do spaces impact the outcome of your works?

Chung So Young: The particular concept I draw upon in relation to space is to find and analyze theorder of the materials and structure present in spaces we inhabit. This organization of materials can only be found in emerging forms. As well, because gravity is an inevitability of human existence in the physical world, it appears most especially in my works. It is same for visual artists, who create by using raw materials. Because theses arrangements are adapted and shaped into other forms, it might be possible to associate my work with Formalism and Minimalism. But at their basis my works are not conceptual sculptures based on the historical contexts of art making, but rather the form of my works are based on contemporary observations of space, place, and environment. And it is in the space, where my work is placed that it is completed.

JM: In the past sculpture has fallen under categories like those mentioned above. In this supposedly post-ideological era do you think of your work as adhering to certain principles of design or sensation that fall outside of the accepted categories of sculptural movements? You have described your works as being figurative, as opposed to abstract. Can you explain how this embodiment arises in your work?

CSY: I think the existence of the work is determined by the generated sense during the experience of it in the material world. This can be a sort of authorial materialism. My creation is not in accordance with the imagination and transcendental spirit, but in terms of sense and phenomenon, which occur by experience and observation. So like I said before, my work is not abstract. I cannot say it is figurative either, but I can say it is constructive.

JM: Recently you were commissioned to create works for the ROUND PROJECT in Hamyang-gun, Gyeongnam. These works had to meet strict conditions required by the organization sponsoring the project. How did this experience shape, not just the outcome of the commissioned works, but your perspective on site-specific works in the age of festivalism and community works?

CSY: For this project, I presented work that is conceptually simplified and functionalfor public space, in contrast to the sculptures and installations I present in museums and galleries. As well, permanent installations in a certain places do not always carry the characteristics of site-specific artworks. If we consider the meaning of a permanent installation as an augmented asset to the region, then it may not focus on investigating and reflecting thepeculiarity of the place. Though making work that mixes into the installation space is still important to me, I have been attempting to make work that can independently exist from the character of time and place. Among the many directions of public art projects in Korea, the project I participated was placing meaning on renewing the local context and its possibility, not on creation based on local study. We can call it gentrification by art.

JM: In the last 100 years our concepts of natural and artificial have undergone serious revision. To the point that what is often considered artificial can actually be described as organically produced and that what is manmade is just another layer of the natural order. Such division seem to be central to your work, meaning that your works represent attempts to invert accepted notions, like abstract and figurative, as well as what is natural and artificial. As an artist what is at stake for you in such attempts?

CSY: It is hard to find the primary factor for determining success and failure of these attempts. In my case, I think what is at stake is to understand fully the order of such dichotomous conditions, and how to respond to the order as an artist.Though it is a difficult path, I think we have to get away from excessively substituting the artist’s emotions and consciousness, and accurately recognizetoday’s contradictory situation in cultivating a friendliness to nature, as well as removing the space for such interpretations. Also, despite the tensions between the natural and artificial, I think these two axes should be able to coexist. In this way, it should be an open dialog, one in which questions can be openly and constantly.

JM: How do you position yourself within the trajectory of contemporary Korean art? Do you think the history of sculpture in Korea follows a path similar to that Rosalind Krauss defined for American sculpture: one of rupture and dislocation to a new place from its origins as, say memorial, or marker? Also on the question of influence where do you see sculpture heading over all?

CSY: I haven’t studied deeply the history of Korean sculpture. But if modern sculpture, which substituted materiality for concepts, was followed by sculpture revealing the artist’s concepts through figurative recreation, I would like to say that my work emulates this phenomenon, which is created by combining the material order and the artist’s free will. If American sculpture can be described as following a “rupture and dislocation to a new place,”Korean sculpture, as well has definitely experimented with new possibilities in sculpture through dissolution. However, as the result of this dissolution, I think the concepts found in sculpture have been expanded, diversified, and have taken on the multiplicity of placements. From my perspective, the sculpture that will continue to be relevant is heading to a place where its material being is more fortified in the non-material and spiritual world of humans.

JoSeub’s recent works are sometimes irreverent tableaus that show a more than different view of Korean traditional culture and history. Especially his series Moon Melody and Moon Melody 2: Eclipse (2013) show a delightful sense of play, while expressing the awkward dynamics and contest between traditional culture and modern life, and the painful truths about the lasting conflict between North and South Korea, respectively. I first saw Joseub’s work in the show Eye of the Needle (2011) curated by Shin Sungran, which focused on the relationship between labor and the conditions of capital. From that exhibit until now Joseub’s works give viewers something important to untangle and read. The works included in that show were especially compelling in the manner he transformed everyday experiences and objects into compositions with the kinds of underlying violence pervading social relations in late Capitalism.

The following interview questions, which where answered via email, are based on a conversation JoSeub and I had in February 2012.

Julia Marsh: When I was first introduced to your work one of your images in particular “Container series – Rice planting” (2010), caught my attention. This image seems to summarize the many tensions that exist between work and status as well as position and bodies. Can you say how labor relations and economies factor into your subject matter, especially this series?

JoSeub: The work, Rice Planting, is a photograph depicting the act of rice planting using rubber-coated, industrial gloves from my late father, who died in 2010. The motif in the work here is based on the personal sacrifices and historic repetitions of my fathers’ generation, born in the 1930s and 40s, who obsessively memorized and practiced the ideologies of construction, development, and national prosperity. I wanted to refer to the situation of labor and the differences between social classes, especially after the new political regime, with its adherence to neo-liberalism,came to power in 2008, making the conflict more and more acute. What I felt was strange at that time, was that most Koreans became very adaptable at the time. I think this condition is common internationally. This work was instigated from my curiosity as to the source of this separation.

JM: Perhaps it is obvious, but do you think of yourself as a political or ideological artist, and if so what is the role in society for political art? What are its potentials and shortcomings?

JS: Before defining myself as a political or ideological artist, I want to talk about artists and artworks, first. An artist, is a person who studies the space and moment s/he lives in now, while analyzing and contemplating how they are made. Artworks are the result of this activity. In the world, I think there is a huge gap between South Korea and the other developed nations. (And surely there are people in the developing world who live in greater agony). To understand this place and the time we live in, I had to understand such historic moments as the forty years of Japanese colonial rule, the war, the division of Korea, military dictatorship, regional conflict, etc. Thus, South Korea is the country, which has to live with this configuration. I think the biggest virtue of contemporary art is its ability to critically view society with humane introspection.

JM:Since many of your images have historical references, I want to ask you what do you consider the legacy for the arts from the political uprisings of the 80s in Korea?

JS: We share a lot in common, the political art at that time and my own, but I think there are many differences, as well. I don’t really think about those differences. Now is very distinct from the conditions of the 1980s, but I think I am addressing those distinctions. The 1980s convulsed with the urge for domestic democratization; while now we are experiencing rapid globalization. The changes in humanity toward vanity, arrogance, and materiality since that period are certainly topics of my work.

JM:When I look at your more recent images I think your lighting, especially reflects a coldness, or a dryness, but definitely a lack of warmth. Can you talk about how you construct your images, and to what effect to you aim at in your method?

JS: Because Container series were shot in the closed space, some people say it is rather cold or dry. I wanted to do it that way to clarify my intention, and also, reveal the cold metallic materiality of the container. It can be read as a bit of metaphor for the reality we live in.

Eclipse series, my most recent work, shot in a slightly different way, I tried to depict the picturesque, with an oriental mood, and color. I actively used lighting in this series; shooting at night without the sun. I aim for different effects with the method in each series, recently I am bacame interested in picturesque photographs, which have rich aesthetic sensibility. And I am always looking for a way of how to put irony and wit in my work.

JM:As an artist that uses photography do you think we can still be shocked or disturbed by images? Also what does photography give you as a medium that others do not?

JS: Looking at the 3D movies nowadays, such changes in the film industry show its potential future. If we accept this situation, many movies made up till now will immediately look out of date. So maybe, the future of the photography and fine art will reflect a similar condition.

Therefore, I think the real question should be: what is the role and position of the fine art, in light of contemporary technology and science? Facing the commercial art, which is infused with technology and capital, I think the only way fine art can survive is to express the sentiment, inspiration and emotion, which the commerical art cannot show. It is then the same for the painting, photography and sculpture; so in this reality, I use photography as my medium for its pictorial structure, while the different entangled situations produce certain narratives.

JM:Can you elaborate on whether the Korean context and related subject matters transcend local borders, and are therefore universal?

JS: From the beginning, I have never thought my works are stories only for Korea. Even though there are some emotional and cultural differences, theses are the common stories that happen all over the world: the human rights, capital, neo-liberalism, rich-poor gap, immigrants, discrimination, city, political power, race, etc.

My work is rooted in the juncture where a rational confrontation of my “self” becomes opaque (ambiguous) in post capitalist reality. I am making openings in the ideology of reality while creating conflicts between contradictory concepts such as reason and violence, logic and jumping of logic, grief and cheer.

I am most interested in highlighting the ironic ego that meet outside of this point of collision. Through my cheerful yet disturbing imagination, I present a type of barrenness that must be overcome to obtain a mutual understanding—not to be understood as an easy utopia based on the constructs of reasoning, but a new implementation of ideology and communication that must be idealized amidst this barrenness.

Nanda Choo is the photographer of the series Modern Girl and The Day. Many here in Korea know her for her concealed identity, which is a mask of dark sunglasses and a typical bob haircut. However behind that stereotypical image is nothing so cliché. Nanda’s work is both glossy and raw. She draws us into her flashy images only to be repelled by their unpleasant content. Nanda Choo received her BFA (1993) from Duksung Woman’s University, Korea and her MFA (2009) from the Graduate School of Culture and Art, at Sangmyung University, Korea. She has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Photography, Seoul (2012); Trunk Gallery, Seoul (2011); Boan Inn, Seoul, (2011); Kunst Doc Project Space, Seoul (2009); and Gana Art Space, Seoul (2008). She has been included in group shows, such as Landscape of Moment, Seongnam Arts Center (2012); Confession, Ilmin Museum of Art (2011); Cross-Scape, Kumho Art Museum, Seoul, JeonBuk Art Museum, Wanju, and Goeun Art Museum, Busan, (2011); Human Faces, National Museum of Singapore, Singapore (2010); On the Line, The British Council, London (2010); Aspects of Korean Contemporary Photography, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (2010); Art-Cinema, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, (2009); Sway in the Space, Daegu Photo Biennale, Deagu Culture and Art Center, Daegu, (2008); and Dong-Gang Photo Festival, Yeongwol-eup, Yeongwol (2007).

Nanda Choo’s work is both glossy and raw. Her flashy images draw us in only to repel us by their unpleasant content, which we cannot deny we are more than familiar. Many here in Korea know her for her concealed identity, which is a mask of dark sunglasses and a typical bob haircut. However, behind that stereotypical image is nothing so cliché. In fact her mask is rather subversive. By donning it Nanda Choo is not so much a persona but a figure for projection. Her mask dispenses with the earnestness often erroneously associated with artists and their trades and forces us to deal with the work she makes rather than the person who makes it. When I sat down with her last winter our conversation centered a great deal on depictions of women and the way media functions as a means of altering perception.

The following interview questions, which where answered via email, are based on the conversation we had in last year.

Julia Marsh: In the past your work has, been an exploration of the self, erased through repetition. Your more recent works eschew the person or self for more pointed material about the nature of consumer society. Can you describe how you came to make this more recent work?

Nanda Choo: In Modern Girl, I used repetition and duplication paradoxicallyto identify the anonymous and unified self in modern society. The black dress and the sunglasses (akin to erasing a person’s identity with a black bar over the eyes, as publishers did in the past) were devices used to make viewers read the figures as pictorial symbols. However, this use ended up going against my intention, because this figure was interpreted as self-portraiture, and therefore produced the idea that the persona in the images was the same as the artist. I wanted neither: to be fixed in a character, nor reveal my private self. As well, because I was physically limited in my ability to express various roles, I had to find another method of expression. To solve all these problems, I came naturally to use the mask, which underscores anonymity and fixes the character. As a result, audiences concentrated on the story in the artwork, rather than focusing their interest in finding out whether the character in the image was a model, or the artist, or the real face behind the mask.

As the matter of course, consumption is a very important element in the substance of my work. Precisely, I am dealing with consumption in the context of modernity, and westernization. As is known, westernization in Korea was suddenly instigated during the dictatorship of modernized Japan (1910-1945), rather than gradually formed in a natural progression through the interactions between neighboring countries. Politically the colonial period ended nearly 70 years ago, but to this day the introduction of systems, technologies, ideologies and culture from the West has continued to proceed at a similar speed and extent. If The Modern Girl series covered the general characteristics of the early period of westernization to the present, with The Day series I am concentrating on bizarre consumer patterns, which originate in western holiday culture, but appear in Korea in mutated and indigenized forms. This holiday culture not only demands material consumption, but also time, which accompanied with different ideologies. This recently adopted anniversary culture in Korea seems particularly accelerated by the wish to resolve a perceived deficiency through prompting memory.

JM: When we met we discussed the technical histories of photography. It also is obvious that your work is highly cinematic in effect. The history of these two mediums film and photography are intertwined, and in your work they also appear inextricably linked. From what perspective have these traditions and technologies informed your work?

NC: I think the most noticeable reason that my work looks cinematic is that it has a narrative, and is a condensation of imagesfrom different periods. Like you said, when I plan and process my work, I take hints from the characteristics of visual media, such as photography and film, or intentionally include them in my work. As a person who works with the photographic medium, I am especially interested in how visual media, which aims at reality and spectacle, has influenced people and society since the modern era. Phenomena occurring through visual media such as propaganda; possessive desires substituted with images; creating self-images by showing daily life; surveillance andaccusation; as well as looking at and being looked at, besides being very important materialsfor my work, are also questions and forms for my investigations.

JM: I understand that the connection you have with your process is involved and intense, and the outcomes of your recent works especially can be defined as sculptural. I am interested in how your knowledge of the phenomenology of making images has influenced what kinds of pictures you take and how composing these object/images occurs or happens in your work.

NC:Sometimes an artist has a unified form in his artworks, but I consider different forms on different artworks to find the most suitable method. Photography is a means of making objects into images, and in that sense, it is a kind of collection. My work is not reciting the collected images, but reconstructing collected objects into materials that express my thoughts on the subject. If the form of my earlier works were based on taking the several pictures of the action and recombining them, my recent works are photographs of constructions composed with humans and objects. Though you can see a massive change in the structural form and process of my work, the only difference between these series is whether the completed image is a combination of images, or a construction of objects, in they are made with the same intentional cut and paste, and are not any coincidental record of objects arranged by someone else. In Modern Girl series, I chose to mix the images to show the homogeneity and overlapping time in the most suitable way, and in The Day, I used staging to emphasize the theatrical acts of the various holidays. The difference between the two is that I wanted a more materialistic experience for the process of The Day. Through working on the various anniversaries I mimicked the rituals of those preparing the events, as well as the financial outlay and time spent visiting markets selecting, smelling and tasting the food, and the emptiness of discarding the used objects (like photographs). The exhibition didn’t include the records of the installation process or the actual structures, but this practice was very helpful to understand this anniversary culture. Additionally, the reason I chose the photographs over the installations for exhibition, was to fix the viewpoint, size, the expression of texture and color, the posture of the figure, etc., to match my intentions.

When I planned the work, I consider the capacity of the machine and the system’s manufacturing capabilities to determine the shape, size and details for each image. For example, in The Day series, I divided the structure into sections and took pictures of each; then recombined the images seamlessly to show the details of each object spectacularly. With this method, I also intended to draw a microscopic confusion between the distance that the eye recognizes and the actual distance to make the audience feel dizzy, like they are participating in an exorcism.

JM:Your works especially the Modern Girl series reflects awareness of consumer culture and its impact on images of women. Can you address how your constructions of objectification are critical of limits on personal freedom, as opposed to one informed by feminism?

NC:The reason I chose the female figure to project modernity and the people who live in, “the modern girl,” rather than “modern people” or “modern boy,” was to compare the empire to the male, and the colony and the imitating person to the female, and not to look at from the feminist view.

My work, Modern Girl obviously has multiple meanings. In general, the modern girl, especially in the Far East Asia, refers to the women who accepted the new lifestyle of the western urban culture. They embraced the concept of self-realization, which came through westernization, and thereby concentrated on revealing their own personality. Making the New Woman as the roll model, they wanted to raise their status by imitating it. Modernity, represented in trends (Fox Fur Army, Fancy Movement), taste (Bean Café), choice of ideology (Pot), and capital (I Like Green, Tout of Mr. Charlie) are still applied in today’s society as an inheritance.* To mention the difference, the people from the early 20th century had a conflict between the given life from the traditional society and the modern life from the western world, but contemporary people have to live the life of constant choices to fit in the flow of fast and forceful changes. The character of Modern Girl series is the modern girl of the modern time, and at the same time, she overlaps with my experience, a contemporary person in this society.

JM:Your works 0303 and 0505 series signify a deep dissatisfaction with Korean culture. They are both highly stylized and layered with symbolism. Do you intend them to be seen as critiques?

NC:My critical view on the world comes from the order and system, which the human created for surviving and breeding, are violent, selfish and greedy, and the uneasy feeling of admitting that I am in the system and also carry that attributes, rather than the self-awareness that the human being exists as a vulgar and stupid expendable for the production and consumption in the consumerist society. With The Day series, I wanted to say that every ceremony and event, including anniversaries, are staged opportunities to express utmost desire within the rules and system created by human beings, only I show them in a transformed structure.

JM: Can you talk about your concealed identity, or rather your public persona? And how you position that self in the work?

NC:The recognition and meaning is the most essential question of my works. Naming is an action to define a meaning, and in that action, the system, hegemony of the knowledge and public opinion are in the position to name, divide and organize the notions, and the object can be anything that the human recognizes, including a thing or a person to the abstract things like the time and the concept. Till now, my works are the results of posing the questions on the given name, from the point of the object which is named, divided, organized and formalized.

When the name and face function to distinguish and recognize the existence, choosing not to use the real name is a denial to the role which is passively given, and an act of narcissism to actively define the self. What is the real name? Why people try to reveal it as though it is the essence of him? We all are born without names. The name is a tag that the society gave us to distinguish, and a mark of the blood relation. By using a name that cannot prove the identity, I intentionally reveal that I am hiding behind anonymity, or a mask. And I want to remain in the fluid status that I can run to another name (a different identity) whenever I want.

I try to manage the whole working process by myself, because I want the work to be mine as a whole. The reason I act as a subject in the work is from this intention. In this way, the person who can best perform a director’s intentions is the director. But more importantly, I do not want to escape from the uneasy place of criticism through the work. I do not want to make somebody else the subject. The person in the work can be me, who proposes the problem, you, who watches it, or somebody else. So, I call the subject in the image Nanda, or that person, rather than me.